Top 10 Best & Worst Covers Of 2020

With another year in the can it's time to look back towards the best and worst covers of 2020. Purely subjective - with some favorited or disliked for purely personal reasons - this list acts as a fun round-up of the year. Take a look back in time for the best and worst covers of 2019, 2018, 2017 and 2016. As per usual, one rule of thumb applies: I must have listened to the album, otherwise intent could be lost.

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10

Worst | Fiona Apple - Fetch The Bolt Cutters | This one is conflicting. Without much competition, Fetch The Bolt Cutters was my album of a year. A masterstroke, even by the standards of one of modern arts' greatest songwriters. But this cover? We knew Fiona Apple was capable of more, as The Idler Wheel still draws beautifully to this day. So while FTBC's cover matches the crazed, DIY feel of the album, with its ransom plastering of text and arbitrary frayed edges, something more clever could've absolutely been administered. This feels like Kanye West's recent covers. Lazy and purposefully provocative.

Best | Deradoorian - Find The Sun | She lurks in the shadow, a menacing figure trapped in the desert with lost voyagers her only prey. Deradoorian's presence draws resemblance to the witch from Snow White, or Madame Leota from Disney's Haunted Mansion ride. A figure both louring and mysterious. The stark use of color - or lack thereof - brings out the ambience set forth by Find The Sun. In a way, the album's title almost becomes sarcastic, as if Deradoorian herself knows you'll never find it under the shroud of her power.

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9

Worst | Garden - Kiss My Super Bowl Ring | No doubt it fits The Garden's style well, but damn if Kiss My Super Bowl Ring's cover ain't trashy. Literally. A filled dumpster of, mostly, empty beer bottles finds a crudely photoshopped sword anchored in place, as if it's Excalibur from King Arthur. Toss in an ugly font one would find at Spirit Halloween, with faulty textures and a green hue that looks more like vomit than a proper title, and it's no wonder Kiss My Super Bowl Ring's cover leaves a lot to be desired.

Best | Avalanches - We Will Always Love You | Though off-putting at first, with a thousand-yard stare that fades at the potential emergence of a smile, We Will Always Love You's cover is both creative and touching. On it, Ann Druyan, creative director of the Voyager Golden Record project - a collage of natural sounds and music destined for any extraterrestrial life to understand our own - is run through a spectograph. It is sound captured visually, quite literally. A message of love beyond our earthly boundaries..

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8

Worst | Blu & Exile - Miles | It's one of my favorite albums of the year. A love letter to Blu & Exile's past, ambitious as all hell, soulful and starry-eyed. But the cover to Miles, regrettably, doesn't do the trick. The exposed roots of a tree signify Blu's past ancestors, a large proponent of this album, but the execution is too on the nose, too straightforward. It feels like nothing more than a photoshoot outtake.

Best | Aiming For Enrike - Music For Working Out | A chiseled giant sawing through a mountainous range. You think that's a good backdrop for Music For Working Out? Hell fucking yeah it is. Unfortunately, I wasn't much of a fan of Aiming For Enrike's repetitive energy, but there's no denying the visual accessory - with its cascading gradient of purple and masculine potency - excels at matching the styles contained within.

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7

Worst | Wilma Archer - A Western Circular | Western Circular reminds me of one of my least favorite covers from last year; Men I Trust's Oncle Jazz. Do I feel bad if this cover were drawn by a child? Sure. Does it change the fact that it's crude, somewhat unsettling (not necessarily a negative), and not remotely representative of the music contained within? Nope.

Best | Charli XCX - how i'm feeling now | Cheap art with sagacious overtones doesn't usually work. But for Charli XCX and how I'm feeling now's voyeuristic bedroom candid shot, equivocating her concept on a socialite handling quarantine couldn't have been applied better. Despite "no one" watching, she still insists on being seen. Even if it's by virtue of a grainy, 90's camcorder. Simple, effective, and, might I add, a tasteful inclusion of sexual allure.

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6

Worst | Childish Gambino / tricot - 3.15.20 / Makkuro | You know why these two are on the list together. In years past, when artists went austere to the ultimate degree by dropping the "non-cover," pictorial haughtiness was the usual culprit. Now it's pseudo-apathy, playing the too cool card by nonchalantly forgetting the purpose of a cover, as we see on 3.15.20 and Makkuro. Childish Gambino took it even further with his track titles, or lack thereof. In either case, pomposity drives the intent, and there is no way around it.

Best | Boldy James - Manger On McNichols | You gotta love when a highly-stylized visual marries to a genre typically too hardened to concern themselves with such frivolities. But Manger On McNichols warrants it, as both Boldy James and Sterling Toles descend to the streets of Detroit, cross in hand. I'm not even sure what's being depicted around James' all-seeing eye, but religious iconography seems the likely answer. Ironically, eye-catching as well. One of the most original Hip-Hop covers in recent memory.

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5

Worst | Arca - KiCk i | In creative terms, KiCk i's cover is admirable. Fierce, defiant, futuristic. But it also happens to rub me the wrong way, as Arca seems to be fetishizing people who identify as gender-neutral or genderqueer. You know, like those memes that mock identity politics by saying "I identify as an attack helicopter," or some other bullshit which seeks to belittle those who struggle swinging with societal norms. Obviously Arca, of all people, wouldn't do this on purpose. The mechanical body transformation does come off that way though.

Best | Keeley Forsyth - Debris | Debris' cover combines two artistic statements I'm typically against; abstract simplicity and body contortion. But man, does Keeley Forsyth's unnerving position, barefoot, rocking hunchback in a barren room, send striking shivers up my spine. The music, while not my favorite, matches the stark tonality and eerie setting.

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4

Worst | Caribou - Suddenly | Talk about uninspired. Which is odd, because Suddenly's music is anything but. Not Caribou's best work, but a sprightly change of pace that featured stellar contributions in 'Home' and 'Ravi.' But this? A puddle slightly rippling in crystal clear water. Maybe I'm missing something in the scarcity, but I can't imagine anything of meaning lingering behind those lone ripples.

Best | Oneohtrix Point Never - Magic OPN | It almost feels like Magic Oneohtrix Point Never's cover shouldn't be possible. Beyond the simple illusion, one that in the music world reminds me of Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion, the gooey texture that ripples into an otherwise impenetrable combination of austere lines illustrates OPN's curious, Glitch-centric style impeccably. It's simple, and perhaps a fair bit crudely-inserted, but the mutating colors and contrasting dynamic is stellar and wholly representative.

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3

Worst | A.G. Cook - Apple | You could say Apple's cover is aesthetically contrarian to A.G. Cook's PC Music vogue, with its Ed Hardy-like tribalism, but iconoclastics will do what they do. Though simplicity wasn't their style, this feels like an Avenged Sevenfold cover, with tacky abstractions and cheap metaphors. Yeah, we get it Cook, it's the apple Adam and Eve ate. 7G was better.

Best | Open Mike Eagle - Anime, Trauma, & Divorce | This is partially cheating, but one can't easily let go of a vinyl edition cover that looks like that. Why Open Mike Eagle chose his sullen, unadorned face for Anime, Trauma, & Divorce over this saturated calamity of flush, anime glint is beyond me. The colors are harmonious, yet quirky and complicated. Hidden details animate an otherwise static image. Shadowing brings out the dimensions of Open Mike Eagle himself, so you never lose sight of the lead character.

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2

Worst | U.S. Girls - Heavy Light | U.S. Girls is, and always has been, an unconventional artist trapped inside the body of a Disco queen. While her last record, In A Poem Unlimited, featured an extraordinary cover, Heavy Light boxes viewers over the head with a dull hammer. Taking the title literally, demonstrably spitting in the face of photography 101, Remy and an inattentive child sit with a barren beach eclipsed in the background. This would fail a high school photography class.

Best | Kelly Lee Owens - Inner Song | Kelly Lee Owens has proved to be the master of monochromatic greyscale. It's a color many in the Tech House industry like to envisage, for industrial standard claims the harsh realities of brutalism. Unlike her debut, which saw Owens visually fatigued by the club scene, Inner Song captures her mid-set. Transcendent, stuck in motion, Owens' whipping locks shrouding a face adrift in the stupor of dance. Beautiful.

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1

Worst | Melt Yourself Down - 100% Yes | Barf. 100% Yes manages to complete the trifecta. Horrendous, borderline revolting cover. Lame, clunky title. And music that pales in comparison to Melt Yourself Down's past material. The double layering does attract the eye, but only out of sheer consternation. It's like the brown note, but for sight instead of sound. The stark white surrounding a circular portrait engraved in a hexagonal border doesn't help matters either, forcing the eye on the uncomfortable star. Thanks, I hate it.

Best | Armand Hammer - Shrines | Utterly brilliant. Conduct a fan-submitted contest, millions deep, to find the perfect image to represent Shrines' motifs, and none would beat what Armand Hammer released. As police brutality rages on in American cities, repressed blacks confined like most to self-quarantine, the sight of Ming of Harlem - a 425-pound tiger who once lived in a crowded apartment complex - fiercely flashing his fangs behind bars as an NYPD cop hangs, rifle in hand, awaiting orders to tranquilize him evokes such visceral, instant imagery. Nothing more needs to be said, Shrines is easily the best cover of 2020.

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